Why 2022 was watershed year for Data Analytics

When looking back at 2022, several organizations will remember it as the year when Business Intelligence (BI) and data analytics applications came of age and became an integral part of their IT suite.

The pandemic created the big push for digitization across organizations, whether government, public sector, or small and medium companies. People veered heavily towards consuming online services. The increase in time spent online created a treasure trove of data of digital footprints and transactions.

Volumes, variety and complexity of data continued to grow. At the same time, advanced analytics technologies on Big Data made it possible to process and analyze this large amount of data, providing organizations with valuable insights.

Organizations realized that with effective analytics, this raw data could be mined for critical business intelligence, drive decision making, optimizing operations and improving customer experience. Insight from data could be turned into substantial competitive advantage, leading  to a wide adoption of Analytics and Business Intelligence.

Some of the key factors that shaped the data analytics applications use and widespread adoption this year were:

1. Improved accessibility and user-friendliness: Advancements in technology have made BI tools and applications more accessible and user-friendly with intuitive and interactive dashboards, allowing more people within the organization to easily access and work with data.

With integration of disparate data, analytics platforms breakdown the existing data silos across locations and departments, giving users a ‘single source of the truth’. The democratization of data empowered all employees irrespective of their roles to access, understand, and use data to make informed decisions, rather than relying on already stressed-out data analysts and IT professionals. This is leading to more efficient and effective decision making, as well as increased innovation and collaboration across departments.

2. Increased adoption of cloud-based solutions: Cloud-based analytics and BI solutions continue to gain popularity as they offer scalability, flexibility and cost-effectiveness. As workloads migrate to cloud from on-prem servers, web-based access makes embedded BI support available to a remote workforce. Up to the minute BI reporting and insights are made available ever more to a mobile workforce working from home, or in the field.
3. Turnkey cloud-based BI solutions provide companies with a comprehensive and easy-to-use platform for data analysis and reporting. These solutions are delivered as a turnkey service and can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, eliminating the need for costly on-premises software and hardware. They are also typically fully managed, which means that the provider takes care of all the technical aspects of the solution, such as maintenance, updates, and backups. This allows companies to focus on using the BI solution to gain insights and make data-driven decisions, rather than worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Additionally, cloud-based BI solutions are highly scalable and can be easily adjusted to meet the changing needs of a business.
4. Ability to forecast and make proactive decisions: The advancements in AI and Machine learning has enabled organizations to make sense of complex data and uncover hidden patterns and insights. Many BI/analytics products now have built-in AI and machine learning capabilities. ML algorithms can be used to analyze patterns in data and make predictions about future events. AI can be used for predictive analytics that involves use of historical data to predict future outcomes. The integration of these technologies within the analytics suite allows business users to forecast future possibilities with confidence and take informed proactive decisions.
5. Greater emphasis on data-driven decisions: Organizations have now come to recognize the value of data-driven decision making, As larger organizations reaped the benefits of data driven intelligence, others had to keep up pace to stay competitive. Decision makers across the board are investing in building capabilities to enable data discovery and leverage data insights. The use of ad-hoc reporting and self-service analytics by end-users have reduced dependency on analysts, increased value and confidence, and acceptance of data-driven decisions across organizations.

In retrospect, the imperative created by the pandemic and the maturing of analytics products with several key feature advancements created an ideal situation for data and analytics to take a pole position in driving organizations’ decisions and market competitiveness. 

The article has been written by Anurag Sanghai, Principal Solution Architect, Intellicus Technologies